Consumers routinely make purchases using payment cards, such as plastic credit or debit cards. Such plastic cards typically have magnetic stripes or chips that are encoded with information, such as a consumer's account information. A credit or a debit card may be used in a business transaction with a bank or creditor through use of a device that communicates with the bank or creditor, such as, for example an automated teller machine (ATM) or a credit card reader.
Credit cards having standard specifications can typically be read by point-of-sale devices at the location of a merchant. When the card is coupled to an electronic card reader at the merchant, such as a platform card reader, the electronic card reader may use its built-in communications interface to contact a creditor that handles credit authentication requests to process the transaction. The transaction may be finalized upon verification of the consumer's account information and the receipt of an approval signal from the creditor.
Despite the prevalence of systems and methods that implement point of sale transactions using plastic cards, plastic cards can prove problematic in situations in which a merchant does not accept payment using a plastic card or a communications link from the merchant to the creditor is inoperable.